CHATURANGA PRADEEP SAMARAWICKRAMA 
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Lankan finds lifetime's work wrecked
London shopkeeper Sivaharan Kandiah was grief stricken as he surveyed the wreckage of his convenience store on Tuesday, looted and gutted by a rampaging mob in a vicious night of violence.
“Everything is gone. My life is gone,” Mr. Kandiah from northern Sri Lanka told AFP. He had made the Clarence Convenience Store – on the edge of a public housing estate in Hackney, East London – his life, working 90-hour weeks at the countre for 11 years, never taking a holiday.
Now it lies in ruins, its stock looted and its fittings smashed to pieces by hooded rioters who stripped it bare. It was ripped apart in a frenzied orgy of violence, leaving so much detritus strewn around that he can barely enter his own front door.
“What can I do? I'm helpless and hopeless. My livelihood is gone. A lifetime's work is gone. Eleven years of my life gone. Everything’s gone. There's nothing left,” Mr. Kandiah lamented as he reckoned that some 50,000 pounds sterling of damage had been done.
He had building insurance but not contents insurance.
“They should have burnt this place to the ground and then I wouldn't have to see anything. Rather than this mess I have to clear up,” Mr. Kandiah said.
The shopkeeper came down three times on Monday night but was held behind the police lines as looters attacked his premises during the savagery on the edge of Hackney's Pembury Estate. A car belonging to a woman living above the shop was torched outside.
Well-meaning neighbours turned up with brooms, cups of tea and biscuits on Tuesday but there was no hiding the sadness in Mr. Kandiah's eyes.
He waited outside in his van for hours before facing up to going inside and witnessing what had been done to his livelihood. He unlocked the shutters and creaked open the glass front door as far as he could.
Inside, in the unlit murky gloom, was a grim scene, the floor invisible beneath layers of wreckage. The place reeks of alcohol spilled from smashed bottles.
Treading carefully in his flip-flops, he began to pick his way through the shelving units strewn across the floor.
“They even took out the ceiling,” he said, looking at the plaster covering the filth and the wires hanging down.
As he made his way to where his counter once was he saw receipts strewn all over the floor, while his invoices and statements were everywhere amid the wreckage.
“They had plenty of alcohol, this was full of alcohol, wine and beer, about five metres long,” he said, pointing at his shelves. “They even had the back stock.” Some butter, some birthday cards and a few bottles of soft drinks were among the few items left.
“I had no sleep. I cried all night because I could see what they were doing to my shop. They pulled the ceiling out. They should get the gun and shoot all of them,” Mr. Kandiah said. (AFP)
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